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Bastide (planned town)Gers

Bastide de Miélan

Miélan

Dimensions
Half-timbered houses inherited from medieval architecture, the town hall and market hall lined with arcaded buildings, the chapel of Saint-Jean built in 1823 near the site of the original church and recognisable by its timber framing, and the church of Saint-Barthélemy, a neo-Gothic building begun in 1869, whose imposing neo-Romanesque bell-tower can be seen from afar.
Period
Paréage of 1271; destruction in 1370 and rebuilding from 1371; capital of the duchy of Antin in 1711; Second Empire buildings.
What stands there
A royal bastide founded by the seneschal Eustache de Beaumarchais, one of the great builders of new towns in Gascony. Wikipedia reports no protected monument historique in the village.

Miélan occupies a ridge between Auch and Tarbes, on the old road of the Ténarèze, in the country of the Affites. In 1271 the lord Guillaume Bernard de la Roque signed with Eustache de Beaumarchais, seneschal of King Philip the Bold, a paréage contract providing for the raising of a town near his castle of Baray. Like other new towns, it borrowed the name of a great capital, Milan, as a pledge of its future. Held to ransom by Henry of Trastámara in 1368, the town was besieged, taken and destroyed by the English in 1370, then rebuilt the following year with the help of Charles V. Having become in the 18th century the capital of the duchy of Antin, it keeps half-timbered houses, a town hall and market hall lined with arcades and a timber-framed chapel raised near the original church.

Further reading

Getting there : Free access to the village. Market every Thursday according to Wikipedia.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

See it on the map OpenStreetMap Directions

Ambient sound

Bastide de Miélan
Florent Pécassou · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

In the same department

All places — Gers (34).